...new to all this ....

Hi guys [ and gals ??] ...Have been playing for more years than I care to think about , pretty boring stuff I guess for most of you guys out there - theater / musicals etc - and have just found your marvellous website - am in UK not USA , so please forgive translation and spelling where necessary . Have recently purchased a bass FX multi-processor [ Alesis Bass FX ] - 40 preset and editable programmes .Am looking for some professional insider help to programme the machine in order to give me a range of 'atmospheric' effects but have no real idea how to stitch the right effects together - the machine has a mind boggling range of effects and multiples of different combinations possible . If you were in my shoes and had only a multi-processor to work with [ .... no Chorus , Flange , Delay or Reverb pedals .... ] how would you go about selecting effects and putting them in order . There are only 3 or 4 effects [ out of 40 ] which are immediately suitable , and I would like to extend the range. Have been playing a Peavey Dynabass 5 string bought in US quite a few years ago . Lovely instrument , great action , nice range of controls , built in EQ etc etc ..... was the real McCoy in it's time . By the way , this is my first posting , so would appreciate careful handling . Over to you tech wizards in the Land of the Free .......

start making a preset for your sound.... maybe a little compressor and some EQ... so you`ll get use to the compressor and EQ of the pedal, which will later help you to make sound bigger and/or better all your other effects....

For 'atmospheric' type sounds, I've always preferred to compress the heck out of my signal first. This gives the bass almost a synthetic quality, then I might EQ it to suit a particular musical passage. If I want more bite, I'll up the treble, and if I want to shake the world, I'll up the bass. For effects, I love flangers, phasers, and choruses. I generally keep the rates low, but the depths really deep. If you increase the resonance (or 'feedback'), you'll get swooshy machine-like ambiance. For a final touch, add some lilting delay or reverb.

I don't know if the Alesis allows you to do this, but if you could split the signal chain within the unit, with an unprocessed bass signal blending with the effected signal, that would be really cool.

Guys , thanks for all your help so far . Had read the manual and had also made a template of all the factory settings , so I know how to edit , copy , etc . What I have no real experience of is stitching the right effects together [ in the right order ] to get a desired sound . Would appreciate if anyone could prompt me with a few tips on which individual effects to use for particular sounds - willing to try anything to get me started . I expect that most multi-processors will have the same or similar effect modules, and I have been searching to no avail for any publication that might give a guide or actual tips to DIY programming of FX , hence the appeal to bass brothers . As u guys probably will know , the Alesis has the following modules :
1] Compressor / Limiter
2] Distortion - 10 different amp modelling effects
3] EQ
4] Cabinet Simulator - 4x10 , 4x12 , 1x15
5] FX1 - a selection of mono effects including Wah , Phaser , Tremolo ,Flanger ,Chorus , Rotary Speaker etc
6] FX2 and FX3 - stereo and Delay based effects as in FX1 plus a few extra
7] Route - signal routing of the fx modules .